Introduction

I recently switched to using Gnome’s Evolution groupware client for email and calendar management. Although I really like Mozilla’s Thunderbird interface better for email, Evolution offers connectivity to Microsoft’s Exchange server, while Thunderbird does not. Plus, Evolution provides built-in calendar support, which is still in the works as a plug-in (SunBird) for Thunderbird, and again, no Exchange connectivity support. 😥

Well, I am learning to like Evolution. It has some nice features, like various spam filters plug-ins (Bogofilter, SpamAssassin). And, it generally works. But, now the question arises, how do I migrate my Evolution settings and email data from one machine to another? Unfortunately, it’s not a simple matter of copying a single directory with its contents. But, the solution is not too bad…

However, you should not just close Evolution and copy these directories. Evolution uses a calendar server and a Gnome settings server, which may keep some of these files open. Therefore, you must shut-down Evolution and the appropriate servers, and then archive the data, like so: